New short story: The Tragedy of Concrete

It’s becoming a bit of a joke among my writer friends that I’m going through a ‘concrete and worms’ phase at the moment. Well, erm, the latest story I have out is a 5000 word speculative non-fiction piece (a parody of an academic article) which starts off thinking about post-war European architecture, and ends up with… carnivorous worms.

Available to read in Shoreline of Infinity (2023 – Issue 34)

Some fun facts about the story:

• This story was inspired by my (aesthetically controversial) opinions about Brutalism. I bloody love Brutalism / Metabolism, and think that both architectural movements could have genuinely improved high-density housing projects, if only they’d been adequately funded. Great books on the topic include: Lost Futures by Owen Hopkins, Concretopia by John Grindrod, and Brutal London by Simon Phipps.

• ‘Dear Monsieur Le Corbusier, It is still raining in our garage…’ is a real paper, and genuinely quite interesting:

• El Lissitzky did genuinely get to design a print shop

• Roman concrete is weird - chemical reactions make it stronger over time, not weaker. (And until recently, it wasn’t clear why…)

• Metabolism’s modular tower blocks are cool - Nakagin Capsule Tower is a great example.

• The carnivorous worms are a real genus, Osedax. They were discovered in 2002.

• The concrete consumption stats are accurate (deets here)

• Self-healing concrete is a real thing

• The “Second Cyborg Manifesto” is a reference to Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’.